The scandal started on high-boil and stayed there for six weeks. Every time Mayor Bob Filner or his supporters tried to put the lid on, somebody else stepped forward to turn up the heat.

It wasn’t just the women who emerged from the early shadows of anonymity to sit in front of media cameras and talk about unwelcome sexual advances. It was men, too. It was former political allies of Filner, and longtime political enemies. It was Democrats and Republicans.

All willing to confront someone who had made confrontation part of his playbook during three decades in public office. All willing to turn the screws on the most powerful elected official in San Diego, even if it meant having their own motives questioned.

When the dust of history settles, when people look back on who helped bring down the city’s 35th mayor, these are some of the stories and some of the moments that will be remembered.

DONNA FRYE

The former City Councilwoman has known Filner, a fellow Democrat, for a long time. She supported his run for mayor, even as she heard rumors about how overbearing he could be.

“I like people with a little fire in their belly who are going to stand up for what they believe,” Frye said during the campaign last year. “I think that Bob, with all his faults, you know, I love him still. We know who he is.”

She went to work for him after he was elected, in a new job as director of open government. She stayed for four months, moving on to a similar job for a statewide nonprofit.

Then, earlier this summer, women came to her with what she called “credible evidence” of sexual harassment by the mayor. She sent him a letter, urging him to resign. “I cannot in good conscience remain silent on this,” she wrote.

Two days later, on July 11, she held a news conference with attorneys Marco Gonzalez and Cory Briggs. The strain on Frye — a rape victim in high school who later fled an abusive first marriage — was obvious. Her voice cracked. She fought back tears.

Asking Filner to leave office, she said, “is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. However, there are community standards in our society that need to be upheld.”

A few hours later, clearly stung by what had been said — and by whom — Filner issued a video statement. “When a friend like Donna Frye is compelled to call for my resignation, I’m clearly doing something wrong,” he said. He apologized for intimidating and failing to respect women.

But he refused then to resign, and a few days later Frye was at another news conference with Briggs and Gonzalez, providing details about Filner’s alleged harassment. The terms “Filner Headlock” and “Filner Dance” entered the local lexicon.

This time, Frye was more angry than upset. “We want the women of this city and the people who love them to know that sexual abuse and this behavior are not normal, not their fault and they are not to blame,” she said. “Bob Filner is to blame and he needs to resign.”

BRONWYN INGRAM

The mayor’s former fiancée was the first crack in Filner’s armor, although not many people recognized it at the time.

Ingram met Filner in 2009, when he was a congressman. She and other disability-claims workers with the Social Security Administration had gone to ask him for help with a paperwork problem. A week later, he asked her out to dinner. They went to Croce’s.

In January of last year, on a trip to Vietnam, Filner proposed to her at a Buddhist temple. Despite their difference in age — she’s 48 and he’s 70, older than her father — she accepted. They had planned to marry in October.

After Filner’s election, Ingram formed a group of citizen volunteers she dubbed “Team First Lady” to work on problems like homelessness and graffiti. On July 8, just days before the sexual harassment allegations surfaced, she sent an email to the volunteers, dissolving the team and announcing the end of her engagement to the mayor.

“This is the only action I can take given the devolvement of our personal relationship,” she wrote. “I wish Bob the best.”

Just what she meant by “devolvement” became clear a week later, as the scandal began swirling around the mayor. In a statement to the media, she called Filner abusive and disrespectful.

“While I had heard rumors that he was engaging in sexual relationships with other women, I was never able to determine their validity,” she said. “However, as Bob’s behavior continued to become more aggressive, standard decorum seemed to disappear. Bob recently began texting other women sexually explicit messages and setting up dates while in my presence and within my line of vision.”

She, too, called on Filner to resign, a request she repeated Thursday. Friday, when he stepped down, he apologized to her by name.

On July 22, the scandal moved beyond anonymous allegations. Irene McCormack Jackson, Filner’s former communications director, held a news conference with noted civil rights attorney Gloria Allred to announce she was suing the mayor and the city.

She relayed a string of sexually suggestive comments she attributed to Filner: “I would do a better job if you kissed me.” And “When are you going to get naked?” And the one that sparked dozens of jokes from late-night comedians: “Wouldn’t it be great if you took off your panties and worked without them on?”

McCormack Jackson, a former U-T editor and former Port of San Diego executive, took a $50,000 pay cut to join Filner’s staff because she said she was excited about his vision for the city. What she found instead, she said, was “an atmosphere where women were viewed by Mayor Filner as sexual objects or stupid idiots.”

The arrival of Allred, a headline-grabbing, soundbite-generating legal heavy-hitter, helped make the story a national one. She came forward with additional victims, all of their stories particularly devastating to the mayor.

During an Aug. 6 news conference, she sat next to Michelle Tyler, a licensed vocational nurse, who said she’d approached Filner for help with a Marine friend’s VA benefits.

“Will you go to dinner with me if I help your Marine?” Tyler quoted him as saying.

That allegation undermined one of Filner’s longtime strengths — his support of veterans — and ratcheted up the case against him by claiming that he was, in Allred’s words, using “his power as the mayor of the city of San Diego to satisfy his sexual needs.”

On Aug. 15, the lawyer dropped her third bombshell. She brought forward Peggy Shannon, a City Hall volunteer and great-grandmother, who said Filner would often stop by her desk. She said he grabbed her and kissed her on the lips one day.

On another occasion, she said, Filner made a comment about his sexual prowess: “Do you think I could go for eight hours straight?”

Allred: “Is City Hall his sexual playground? Is that what it’s supposed to be?”

JAN GOLDSMITH

Once the scandal broke, Goldsmith, the city attorney, moved quickly to limit Filner’s wiggle room.

At the attorney’s urging, the city took the unusual step of suing its own mayor, seeking indemnity from any financial judgments that might be awarded in a sexual harassment suit.

“This is part of due process,” Goldsmith said, an apparent dig at Filner’s earlier comments about deserving a full investigation and “due process” before being asked to resign.

The city dropped its suit against Filner as part of the resignation agreement Friday, but Goldsmith said it retained the right to seek reimbursement from him if necessary.

As the allegations against Filner surfaced, Goldsmith asked for a policy, later adopted, that barred Filner from being alone with any woman on city property. His office later prepared — but never filed — a complaint that would have sought an injunction keeping Filner from City Hall.

Some accused Goldsmith, a Republican, of having ulterior motives in tangling with the Democratic mayor. There was speculation Goldsmith would be one of the candidates to replace him. He said Friday he won’t run.

The two clashed almost as soon as Filner took office. Filner hired his own legal adviser and didn’t consult with Goldsmith, who complained that he had to learn what was going on by reading the newspaper.

In February, Filner crashed a Goldsmith news conference and accused the attorney of “unethical and unprofessional conduct.” They later argued about medical-marijuana dispensaries and pension lawsuits. Filner cut the city attorney’s budget and had the police escort one of Goldsmith’s assistants from a meeting.

It got so bad that in early July, City Council President Todd Gloria issued a statement calling their warfare a distraction and urging them to meet with a mediator. “This conflict has to stop,” Gloria said.

The leader of the Filner recall campaign has a love of local politics that he traces to his upbringing in Boston and a history with the mayor that dates to 1987.

That’s when Filner was elected to the City Council and began crossing swords with another new council member, Bruce Henderson, who had announced his candidacy in Pallamary’s back yard. Filner engineered a redistricting plan that cut heavily into Henderson’s base of support.

“I just got so angry at Filner,” Pallamary said. “How dare he.”

Pallamary launched a recall against a Filner ally, Linda Bernhardt, who in the redistricting plan would have taken over much of Henderson’s turf. The recall won, and the redistricting plan was thrown out.

This time, the licensed surveyor and land-use consultant said he put together a “Recall Filner” Facebook page before the sexual-harassment allegations surfaced. He said he’d been watching the mayor’s clashes with City Attorney Jan Goldsmith and City Council President Todd Gloria and he figured a meltdown was coming.

“I know how that guy operates,” he said.

He was in Balboa Park, instantly recognizable with his thick silver hair and his Boston accent, when the recall officially started last Sunday. It faced steep odds — proponents would have needed to collect 101,597 signatures from registered city voters in just 39 days — but they were off to a good start, reporting more than 20,000 in the first week.

After Filner announced his resignation Friday, City Councilman Kevin Faulconer thanked the hundreds of volunteers who circulated petitions. “I don’t believe we would have gotten this far without you,” he said.